The Loneliest Kind Of Lonely
by ChicaFrom3
Summary: No man exists in a vacuum, not even former hatch hermit Desmond. Putting the pieces together.


**_TITLE:_** The Loneliest Kind Of Lonely  
**_AUTHOR:_** Kristen Kilar (chickadee(underscore)from(underscore)3(at)yahoo(dot)com)  
**_RATING:_** PG. Angst.  
**_DISCLAIMER:_** Sadly, nothing of Lost belongs to me, unless you count a couple special-edition TV Guides and the first season DVDs. If they DID belong to me, Charlie and Claire would be married by now, Henry Ian Cusick would be a series regular, and Desmond would have an on-island love interest otherwise known as me. Not true. I'm sorry. Title comes from the lyrics to "Make Your Own Kind of Music" by Mama Cass, and that's not mine either.  
**_ARCHIVE:_** Just ask, I'd love to give permission.  
**_SUMMARY:_** No man exists in a vacuum, not even "former hatch hermit" Desmond. Putting the pieces together.  
**_SPOILERS:_** Up through "Orientation".  
**_PAIRINGS:_** Desmond/Mystery Girl From The Photo. My new MysteriousOTP! Well, not quite OTP as I also accept Desmond/Me. But close enough, yeah? And I think this is my first Lost fic not to possess even the slightest hint of Charlie/Claire! (gasphorrorshock)  
**_AUTHOR'S NOTES:_** Seriously, I can't get enough Desmond. I am an official Desmond fangirl. So I wrote Desmond fic. Admittedly, I wrote it when I was absolutely exhausted, so it may be even weirder than most of my stuff. Feedback will be worshipped.  
Much love, as always, to my darling incredible beta, niki blue, who is crazy enough not to like Desmond but beta'd for me anyway. I love you, sista.  
All bolded text is Desmond quotes taken directly from the first three episodes of Season Two. Everything else is pure extrapolation and/or invention by me.

* * *

**"I was almost a doctor once."**

I was six months away from my doctorate, third in my class, and she said, "Let's run away."

I had an anatomy test the next morning, so I said, "Yes, okay."

So we got in her car and drove and in the morning we were miles away and I never walked back into a classroom again.

**"My excuse—I'm trainin'….For a race around the world. Impressive, I know."**

She came dancing into the room, all smiles and sugar, and said, "Des, did you hear about this race?"

"What race?"

"A race around the world. You should compete, Des. It sounds like fun. I know you'd win."

And I said, "Yes," of course, because when she smiles like that I can't say no. So I went into training for a race around the world.

**"What did you do to her, then?"**

She said, "Des, I want a baby," and I stared at her, not understanding.

"So that I won't be alone," she explained, and I stared at her, not understanding.

"While you're racing around the world," she concluded, and it finally clicked but still didn't make much sense.

But I said "Yes" anyway, and the look on her face was worth it, and I took a break from training to go shopping for baby supplies with her. I bought a baby carriage and she bought a stuffed bunny and we mumbled about how our lives would change when we were parents but didn't really believe it.

**"You must've done something worthy of this self-flagellation."**

When after three months she still wasn't pregnant, we went to a doctor. He ran some tests and then said, "It's highly unlikely that the two of you will ever be able to conceive a child together," and we just stared at him like we didn't understand what he was saying.

He said, "If you'd like, there are procedures we can run to increase the chances of…"

And she said, "We don't have time…Des is training for a race."

She cried that night and all I could do was hold her. I didn't know how to fix what was wrong.

Maybe I'd never known.

**"Just one thing...what if you did fix her?"**

She danced in the morning to the Mamas and the Papas and smiled brightly at me. "Morning, Des," she said.

And I said, "Morning, love."

She said, "Let's go down to the park today. You don't have to train, not today, do you?"

And I said, "No, not today."

And she said, "Thanks for holding me last night. But…I'm okay."

**"And you don't believe in miracles?"**

When I left to train in the States, she put the stuffed bunny she'd bought and a photo of us in my backpack, and I knew she'd forgiven me.

A miracle.

So I prayed. Every city I stopped in for training, I found a church and I prayed.

And when I ran into a doctor in a stadium, running like the devil was after him, and he told me about a girl he'd failed to fix…I asked him.

"What if you did fix her?"

And he laughed at me and said, "With her situation, that would be a miracle, _brother_."

**"You have to lift it up."**

"You have to lift it up, Des," she said when I called her crying.

Something you should know about me.

I hate being alone.

When I was training it wasn't so bad, I could focus on the physical and nothing else. But then night came, and training ended for the day, and I just wanted her to be lying next to me.

I said, "I don't know how."

And she said, "You'll find a way. You always do. I have faith in you, Des."

I slept holding her bunny. It still smelled like her perfume.

**"Well, good luck, brother. See you in another life, yeah?"**

I called her one last time before the race was due to start.

I said, "I love you, yeah?"

And she said, "I know."

"I'll win the race," I said.

"'Course you will, Des. Never doubted it for a moment," she said.

I said, "And then I won't need to be away from home anymore."

"I'm looking forward to that," she said.

And I said, "Will you marry me when I get back?"

And she said, "Des, I have to go. I love you, I'll see you when you get back, yes I'll marry you, see you in another life, yeah?" and she hung up.

And I got on my boat.

**"I was on a solo race around the world, and my boat crashed into the reef, and then Kelvin came."**

I don't remember where I was when I lost control of my boat.

Somewhere in the Pacific, but other than that…

I lost control, and I crashed.

And then he came.

My first thought was _crazy man_, but my boat had just crashed and he was the only one coming out to check on me, so my options were not exactly many and varied.

This man came running out of the jungle yelling something at me, and before I could explain what had happened, he was gesturing at me frantically, yelling, "Hurry, hurry! Come with me!"

What was I supposed to do? I grabbed my backpack and went with him.

He brought me into the jungle, opened a hidden door, and half pushed me inside. The whole time he kept saying, "Hurry, hurry, hurry." Hadn't even asked me my name.

We went through a long tunnel and into a bizarre room that looked like a bachelor pad out of a '70s sitcom.

More annoyingly, though, was a loud beeping noise.

He pulled me into the next room where there was an old computer system set up. The beeping was coming from there.

He ignored me for the moment, rushed to the computer, typed in a code, and hit _execute_.

The beeping stopped. A timer I hadn't noticed before reset, to 10800.

I asked, "What was that all about, brother?"

He smiled and said, "Just saving the world."

**"So I started pushing the button, too."**

He said, "My partner Matthew died two weeks ago."

He said, "This is really a two-person job."

He said, "Nobody's ever left this island and you probably won't ever either."

He said, "My name's Kelvin. Would you like to save the world? Just until my replacement comes."

And I said, "Sure thing, brother."

**"And we saved the world together for a while, and that was lovely. Then Kelvin died, and now here I am all alone."**

I buried Kelvin in the jungle a few feet from the main entrance to the bunker.

It took me a while. Every 108 minutes I had to go back inside and push the button again. So it took a while to dig a suitable grave. But I did it.

Then I didn't go out anymore.

I didn't need to. Had enough food to last me. Workout equipment. Lots of books, ones I'd brought on the boat with me, ones Kelvin had already had. My picture of her and me together in happy times. The stuffed bunny that had stopped smelling of her perfume but I couldn't let it go despite that. And Kelvin's records, including a recording of Mama Cass singing 'Make Your Own Kind Of Music' that I played over and over and over again because it reminded me of her and it made me feel less alone.

And I kept pressing the button. Every 108 minutes. Wondering if it was doing anything at all. Afraid not to.

**"It's over."**

Until one day the escape hatch blew up and three people broke in.

One of them was a girl. Nothing like her. Not even a little bit.

One of them was a man. He said his name was Locke. I asked if he was Kelvin's replacement. He lied.

But he put in the code and hit the button.

One of them was another man. And I almost recognized him. He held a gun on me and spat insults at the man Locke.

Then the girl shot the computer.

**"As far as I can run, brother."**

And I left.

They swore there was a man they knew, Sayid, who could fix the computer.

And I left.

I took my backpack, I took a handful of the vaccination, I took some food, I took her bunny, I took my Bible.

And I left.

The man I almost recognized, he followed me.

**"You're a doctor, right? There was this girl. You were worried. You said—You said you failed her. That was you!"**

And I recognized him.

The man from the stadium.

How, exactly, he got from a stadium in Los Angeles to the same nonexistent tropical island I was on is still a mystery.

They said their plane crashed, like as not to be true.

He said he married her—the girl he hadn't fixed.

He said it wasn't real, saving the world, the button, that it was just a mind game.

Like as not to be true.

I left anyway.

Because I couldn't handle it, couldn't handle failure, can't handle the thought of joining them only to fail them like I failed her, like I failed Kelvin…

**"The end."**

And now I'm alone again.


End file.
